


bye bye butterfly

by The_Werewolf_of_Bauhaus



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale, 半妖の夜叉姫 | Hanyou no Yashahime | Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29708337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Werewolf_of_Bauhaus/pseuds/The_Werewolf_of_Bauhaus
Summary: After his fateful third encounter with his half-brother, Sesshoumaru meets, not a human girl, but an involuntary time-traveler. Determined to right the path he would've strayed from, the course of history is changed. Years later, an intoxicating scent blows in with the cold gust of a new spring and Sesshoumaru will cross paths with the woman who would've shaped his future.And possibly still could.
Relationships: Rin/Sesshoumaru (InuYasha)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 48





	1. Chapter 1

“Sesshoumaru-sama, what are you—”

“Jaken. Silence.”

His vassal quieted himself at once as the daiyokai returned his concentration to the scent in the air. He’d paused along this path moments earlier, stopped in his tracks by his keen nose. The gusting spring wind brought with it the ambience of a close-by human settlement and with it, a faint but familiar smell. Familiar in the _wrong_ way.

It was what made him pause so long to decipher it. _It couldn’t be her._ No, it was...off. It couldn’t be her but it was so kindred to the smell he remembered.

He grimaced, not wanting to have to enter a human enclave. He let out an internal sigh, knowing the curiosity would overwhelm him enough to have to investigate.

He changed direction, the imp hot on his heels. The silent management of expectations repeated like a mantra in his head. _Not her. It_ **_can’t_ ** _be her. It’s too_ **_human_ ** _. There’s no trace of…_

It isn’t her.

Of course.

Who it was, he realized, was the only person it possibly could have been. It should have been obvious, maybe, but he’d willed her into such an inconsequential figure. Secure in the idea that she had no role in his future anymore, he’d mentally discarded her.

He spied the young woman from his perch on a high tree branch. That vantage point gave him a view of the road on which she traveled. From beside him, Jaken glanced nervously from the ground view, to his master and back to the road again. Obviously, his vassal was curious about what business he had in a place inhabited by humans, but having already been told to keep his mouth shut, would not ask any further questions.

Sesshoumaru took a sharp inhale through his nose to confirm that the woman he was watching was the one he thought she was. It was necessary, because even from that far away, he could tell that she was a _woman_ and not a little girl like he remembered.

_Had that much time passed already?_

He’d known her only incidentally. His lasting memory is a tiny girl-shape in a dirty kimono, cheerfully hand in hand with the fearsome hanyou specter that still haunted his imagination. He had been thinking he should leave then. Turn around, his curiosity sated, and never look back. He didn’t have to have anything to do with her. Didn’t _want_ to have anything to do with her. Whatever fondness he’d reluctantly developed for the daughter of his errant self, he would not go down that path in _this_ time. If anything, that vision of the future would serve as a guide map to avoiding pitfalls and ruin; A second chance not to stray from the path he was meant for.

They could—and should, be strangers.

Another strong gust of wind whips through the air, blowing his hair forward and rattling the branches with their newly-formed buds. He smirked as some of the buds blew off, lifted by the wind and landing in the dirt below; pruned before they would ever get the chance to mature into leaves. The expression fell from his face when the scent again drifted into his nostrils. Pleasant and perfume-like, maybe the finest he’d ever smelled. Swept up and carried to him from a retreating figure.


	2. Chapter 2

The first time Sesshoumaru smells her, he’s lying bloody and battered and barely able to move, underneath a tree in a forest far enough away from Inuyasha and his friends to avoid their detection. It’s there that he reels from his latest battle with the abominable half-demon, having been caught off-guard by his half-brother’s sudden mastery of the Wind Scar.

_Chichi-ue’s blood is too strong._

He knows this and, until recently, it’s always been an immense point of pride for him; a part of his lineage he'd staked his ego and his self-worth on. Now it’s beginning to feel like a curse. As usual, Inuyasha has left him grieving an aspect of his father he’d previously considered an unquestionable positive. _What a waste_. That pure, vein-searing, earth-scorching, world-conquering blood; given away to a lowly human woman—And for _what?_

An overpowered hanyou brat who won’t stay in his place and wields his father’s heirloom like a flustered child who’s tied a jagged rock to the end of a stick.

It should be humiliating, that he’s let himself come to this. And he’s in _bad_ shape. Even the trauma and blood loss from losing his arm hadn’t left him this infirm and in such excruciating pain. His saving grace is that, momentarily, he needs to focus all of his mental power on healing—on keeping his body alive—that his thoughts can’t dwell on the circumstances that lead to the injuries he’s fighting.

So when, through the haze of pain, he catches a whiff of something that _just can’t be_ , he rationalizes it away as a trick of the mind. A delusion brought on by the mixture of bodily anguish and mental tumult he’s experiencing.

She must have been drawn there by the scent of his blood. Upon stumbling across him in the state he was, she probably decided it was better off not interfering and quickly made herself scarce. It was likely she realized he would survive with or without her help—her own existence was proof enough. Better off it would be; he’s sure he wouldn’t have reacted well if he’d smelled who she was, _what_ she was, while in such a vulnerable state.

He doesn’t react so well when they eventually _do_ meet face to face.

He can’t really describe how utterly _wrong_ she smells. What an almost reality-breaking experience it is to find _his_ scent—his pure, daiyokai scent—mixed with a _human’s_. It leaves him aghast, unable to explain the sheer, dreamlike, _impossibility_ of what he’s smelling. Surely, this was some game of Naraku’s. Only…

He was certain he couldn’t be fooled. Not by smell. No one, absolutely _no one_ , had a keener nose than Sesshoumaru.

The girl begins to explain herself while he listens. Outwardly, he maintains a typically bored expression, masking his inner turmoil. He’s not actually interested in the, no doubt, convoluted, set of the circumstances that have caused her to appear before him and is mostly buying himself time while he decides whether he should simply kill her on the spot. One quick slash of his claws along her throat would solve the problem immediately. Her death would mean he would recall her only as a harbinger; his fears taken corporeal form and sent to taunt him, only to be swiftly defeated.

Unfortunately, his hesitation is his undoing. He ends up listening to her story for too long and his natural curiosity has already taken root.

She says she’s from the future. And her name is Setsuna.


	3. Chapter 3

The woman’s scent sticks with him, even weeks afterward. Traces of it linger in his nostrils and, almost unconsciously, Sesshoumaru finds himself wandering back to it’s point of origin. As he’s determined not to deliberately seek the woman out again, the act is more about hoping he’ll catch another whiff of her scent incidentally. Or so he tells himself.

The wind doesn’t comply so easily though. Jaken in tow—smarter than he looks and possibly aware of what his lord is up to—he fruitlessly drifts across the same expanse of terrain more times than he’s likely to admit. He’s about to give up the chase for his pleasant, aromatic memory and start heading back west when a breeze picks up. The leaves on the shaking branches are starting to unfurl themselves now.

She’s close by. Much more close by than she had been the last time. This time he sends Jaken off on some unnecessary errand before he makes his approach.

He’d promised himself he wouldn’t do this. No matter, he’s Sesshoumaru and he’ll find _some_ rationale he can use to cloak his interest. Anything to avoid a few moments of even mild self-examination.

He would merely like to see what she looks like up close, now that she’s an adult. In another time, this woman would’ve been the mother of his _Other’s_ (Not _him_. His _Other_. They are completely separate people as far as he’s concerned.) children and, he assumes, his wife. What face had caused his other self to throw away his long-held ideals?

This could be dangerous. That he’s even willing to entertain the idea is a sign that he’s beginning to soften too much. He’d been resolute once, in the immediate aftermath of Setsuna’s revelations, but the shock has worn off since then. Years ago, he truly believed he’d never see her again; that he’d forever treat her as if she’d simply never existed in the first place.

He rationalizes this too. He’s confident he can leave this encounter after only a cursory glimpse of her face _because_ of how much time has passed. He believes, based on what Setsuna was able to tell him, that the time when his other self’s daughters would have been born has already come and gone.

Following her trail leads him into the forest this time instead of towards a human settlement. When he comes upon her, she’s kneeling in front of a river. She’s dressed in the underlayer of her kimono; the outer layer folded over a traveling pack. She splashes water onto her face, then stands up, her hands going to the ties of her white undergarment.

Sesshoumaru isn’t interested in seeing that much. He also doesn’t like the idea of being thought of as the type to spy on women while they undress, even by a human. He makes a noise to alert her of his presence. _Just one glance. Just one glance at her face and he’ll turn around and leave._

She jumps a little in surprise. Turning around, her mouth makes an ‘o’ shape as she sees who, or what, is standing behind her. To be honest, he’s a little underwhelmed. Not that he would consider this woman _bad_ looking by any means. It wasn’t hard to envision men’s eyes lingering on her as she walked down a village road. Actually, compared to what he’d imagined she’d grow up to look like when he met her as a grimy, messy-haired little girl (He thinks he pictured one yokai mountain witch his father would go to for medicinal herbs) things could’ve been considerably worse.

Still, he’s Sesshoumaru, heir to the Western Dominion. Men may spare this woman a glance but their heads would soon return to where they were previously occupied. If he were going to take a human as a wife, wouldn’t it suit him only if it were the most beautiful human woman he could find? Someone who would turn the heads of even the most mortal-loathing yokai?

The woman’s hands slowly leave her white ties. Her eyes narrow, not in fear or suspicion, but like she’s studying his appearance, as he studies hers.

“Is it really you?” she says softly, with a look of recognition.

He’s caught off guard by that. For some reason, it only now occurs to him that she has _also_ met him before. Moreso, unlike her, _his_ appearance would not have changed at all since their last meeting.

“Sesshoumaru-sama?”

* * *

_She’s very human-looking, this Setsuna. The only features that would set her apart from any other human he’s come across are her blue-violet eyes and the streaks of bold, crimson-red in her dark hair. He’s, admittedly, relieved she doesn’t look anything like Inuyasha. He feels this even as he tries to convince himself it doesn’t, or_ **_shouldn’t_ ** _matter at all_ **_what_ ** _she looks like because she simply_ **_must not be_** _._

_Setsuna doesn’t claim to know exactly why she’s been sent to this particular point in time, but Sesshoumaru has already made up his mind that, clearly, something in his life had gone horribly wrong and fate had seen to it to send the product of that calamity back to him as an omen._

_The girl, sadly, does not seem to share this idea. Although she’s aware of the mechanism that sent her back, her journey was an involuntary one and traveling back and forth at will is beyond her control. She frets, in an understated sort of way he finds uncomfortably familiar. She worries that she may not be able to get back to her own time; to her_ **_sister_** _._

_His eye twitches. There’s_ **_more_ ** _of them._

_Jaken, lacking his master’s sense of smell, is significantly more suspicious of the girl’s story._

_“You’re a thousand years too late if you think Sesshoumaru-sama would ever believe such trifle! Sesshoumaru-sama, this Jaken humbly suggests you behead this cretin at once for speaking such lies about you—”_

_He grabs the Nintojo out of his vassal’s hand and whacks him over the head with it. The girl stares at the dazed yokai rubbing the fresh lump on his head and a look of recognition washes over her._

_“Huh, he was a lot nicer to me the last time we met.”_

_Since he doesn’t want to ask her any questions that would imply he’s curious about her beyond the obviously threatening one’s like, “Just who the hell are you and how dare you have a scent that implies I fathered a hanyou?” he tries to infer things about her in other ways. He pays close attention to her appearance, her mannerisms, her speech._

_That fur on her shoulder is his. He moves his hand instinctively to the fluffy mass by his side. It’s strange to think that two versions of the exact same piece exist here in the same place, at the same time. He frowns._ **_This_ ** _fur will remain intact, he thinks, defiantly._

_Her clothes are human made, as is the naginata (He must still be on bad terms with Totosai) she carries. Besides his fur, the only thing on her that gives off any yoki is her armor. It lacked quality though, as if it had been made from the remains of weak yokai. Who was he in the future that he would let any child of his run around in_ **_that_** _? Maybe he’d decided that since she was only half-demon, he would only put half the effort into raising her._

_He momentarily forgets his decision to be as coy as possible unless it's to tell her her existence is anathema to everything he believes in. When he asks her about it, her answer surprises him._

_“You **didn’t** raise me. In fact, you could say we’re complete strangers.” _

_That....doesn’t sit right with him at all. Hanyou or not, he would never abandon his own child. He’s certain of that and he tells her so, not liking one bit that he has to defend himself to this little bad-omen curse on his bloodline. She simply shrugs, displaying the same affectless attitude that had only broken slightly, earlier; when she had mentioned her sister. He looks into her emotionless eyes and it’s very clear this girl feels no warmth towards him._

_Then again, it’s not like his relationship with his own mother is brimming with warmth, that’s not really proof of anything. He still thinks she’s probably telling the truth but he’s beginning to become annoyed that this stupid girl knows things about his future self and his life that he doesn’t. He has no way of accurately refuting any of it._

_She closes her eyes and leans back against the tree she’s been sitting in front of. “You asked me and I gave you an honest answer. I can’t help it if it’s not what you want to hear,” she says, crossing her arms and tilting her head back imperiously._

_He thinks he gave up on the idea of killing her too soon._


	4. Chapter 4

_Sesshoumaru’s ears perk up at the name ‘Kirinmaru’ and he feels another spike of curiosity he’s unable to temper._

_“What does Kirinmaru have to do with anything?” he asks._

_“The tree spirit—” Setsuna begins to answer. She’s talking about the spirit of the Goshinboku, the tree his brother was pinned to for fifty years by a scorned miko’s spell. The girl had told him this spirit had assumed the appearance of the miko as a borrowed form._

_“—she told us Kirinmaru had a plan to plunge the world into a degenerate age.”_

_He’s deeply puzzled by this. That didn’t sound at all like the Kirinmaru he knew. He tells her this._

_Her brow furrows. “Myoga said the same thing when we mentioned it to him. He didn’t find it in character for him either.” She goes on, “but that was what the spirit of Goshinboku told us. She wanted Kirinmaru to be slain and she thought the three of us were the ones who needed to do it.”_

_“The_ **_three_ ** _of you,” he repeats. Who were the other two? Her sister, perhaps, and the third? He dreads the reveal of_ **_another_ ** _hanyou._

_He’s right about the sister but she then says the other is another girl companion of hers; one she believes to be her cousin._

_“Cousin.” He has only one sibling and a sneaking suspicion she’s not talking about someone from her human mother’s side of the family._

_“Moroha,” she names this supposed cousin. “She’s the daughter of the hanyou Inuyasha—your ‘brother’,” she sounds slightly unsure, “—and a miko named Kagome.”_

_He can barely contain his revulsion. Inuyasha had_ **_bred_ ;** _and with that obnoxious human girl he always had hanging around with him, to boot. Sesshoumaru could only imagine how insufferable their offspring would be. As distasteful as he finds it though, it comes as a welcome, if brief, diversion. A complete fool he may have made of himself but he still hadn’t turned out to be the most pathetic member of the family._

_The question of Kirinmaru hangs in the air though. He hasn’t seen hide nor hair of his father’s old counterpart in over a century. There were even rumors he’d fallen into a long slumber around the time of Chichi-ue’s demise and had not awoken since. Had the beast king just been keeping a low-profile; scheming away while giving the appearance of being unbothered and content with his mastery over the east? Chichi-ue had given every indication that Kirinmaru should not be a source of unease for them; that the kirin was far more likely to be found with his nose stuck in the pages of some foreign book than plotting their destruction. Had it all been a clever ruse? An obfuscation of his true nature?_

_Something else bothers him too._

_“Why task you with slaying Kirinmaru? Why not I?”_

_Three young hanyou girls? Correction;_ **_two_ ** _young hanyou girls and a damned_ **_shihanyou._ ** _Setsuna claimed he hadn’t raised her but had said nothing to indicate that he was dead. As Lord of the West, the duty of slaying Kirinmaru should have fallen to him._

_The girl narrows her eyes. Again, he’s perturbed by how little he seems to intimidate her. Especially now that he’s aware of how tenuous the relationship between her and his future self actually is. ‘Strangers’, she called them._

_It’s a bluff, he thinks, letting his lips curl into a smirk. She knows very well how dangerous he is to her. He knows what that lack of expressiveness is hiding._

_“You two seemed to be working together.”_

_The smirk disappears just as quickly as it came. His eyes widen a stretch and he makes a noise somewhere in the back of his throat._

_“Impossible.” He, Sesshoumaru, teaming up with Father’s former rival to plunge the world into a degenerate age? How absurd._

_Then again, ‘absurd’ is the exact word he would’ve used to describe the idea of him fathering hanyou children. He suddenly doesn’t care so much about how unmistakable her scent is, this is all getting to be far too much to believe. What had_ **_happened_ ** _to him?_

_“The Tree of Ages,” Setsuna says, “it said that you both walked the same path; the wrong path and that it wouldn’t do to get rid of only one of you. She said both of you needed to be defeated, not just Kirinmaru.”_

_“And,” he says, “did you agree to this?”_

_“I refused.”_

_Her face takes on another one of her haughty, imperious looks._

_“The way I see it, it’s the responsibility of the two beast kings to keep each other from walking down the wrong path—Not mine.”_

_Oh, he had indeed taken the_ **_wrong_ ** _path if everything he’d learned so far was true. But this girl is right that she will not be the one to keep him from it. She’s done more than enough already. The one who will defeat the Sesshoumaru that would walk this errant path—_

_Will be Sesshoumaru himself._

* * *

This was a bad idea, Sesshoumaru thinks, as his name leaves the woman’s lips. He turns around and begins heading in the opposite direction.

“Wait!” the woman calls after him. She catches up to him but struggles to keep up with his effortlessly quicker strides.

“I remember you,” she says with hitched breath. “You knew Setsuna.”

He wants to tell her to keep that name out of her mouth. There are very, _very_ few people in this world that know who she’s referring to and it bothers him very much that _she_ is one of them.

_—One day they cross paths when he catches her scent nearby and he’s surprised to see the previously solitary hanyou girl holding hands with a small, human child. Her choice of traveling companion strikes him as odd; of all the types of human or yokai she could've attached herself to, this would not have been who he would’ve expected—_

“Wait, just wait a moment, please,” the woman begs as she continues to trail behind him. “Have you seen Setsuna? Has she returned?”

He stops suddenly and his shadow bumps inelegantly into his back.

“Stop saying that name,” he commands.

“Why?” she asks in a pleading voice. “It’s been so long since Rin last saw her. When you showed up back there—Rin thought it meant maybe she had come back.”

“She hasn’t,” he tells her, “She’s gone. Forever it seems.”

The woman lets out a disappointed, “oh.”

He cranes his head around to look at her and in her face he can see the vestiges of a girl who will never be. The family resemblance is there. He wonders if she’s ever looked into a mirror or caught her reflection in a piece of glass and noticed that it looked a little bit like the girl she had once known was staring back at her.

“You won’t see her again,” he says. Her, or any other child with both their faces. “It would serve you well to forget she ever existed.”

“Forget about Setsuna?” is her incredulous response. He looks away from her again and continues back into the forest.

“Wait!” she calls once more. “Why did you show up here, then? What did you want with Rin?”

“Nothing.” Nothing, nothing, nothing. He repeats the mantra in his head. He wanted absolutely _nothing_ from this woman.

“You couldn’t have wanted nothing,” her voice still has that tone of incredulity. “ _You_ found _me_. It’s not a coincidence. Why?”

He should just ignore her and fly off now. He need not answer to a human. Particularly this one. This completely insignificant _stranger_. This _un-mother_. This imaginary wife of a defeated ghost.

Instead, he does give her an answer. One that stretches the truth but will likely appease her.

“Your scent still contains traces of Setsuna’s. I came to investigate on the off chance that she had returned. Obviously, that is not the case. Now begone.”

Behind him, he can hear the sound of her sniffing, like she’s attempting to pick up Setsuna’s smell from her body based on this information.

“Can you really still smell Setsuna on me?” she asks him, sounding impressed. “Rin last saw her years ago. You really have that good of a nose?”

He huffs. “Of course, you ignorant girl. This Sesshoumaru is a pure-blooded dog yokai. You should expect nothing less.”

She doesn’t take the hint to finally leave him be. Instead, she _again_ tries bringing up their mutual connection with Setsuna.

“It’s just that...Rin has no one else to talk about her with. No else knew her. She figured since we were both friends of—”

“I said to _stop_ saying that name,” he growls.

“But—”

He gets fed up and calls upon a surge of yoki. He whips around to face her, eyes wide and red, fangs bared. He hisses at her and she stumbles backward in alarm. Truthfully, she doesn’t seem as scared as he would like. She doesn’t immediately turn and run and to his consternation, there’s a brief moment where he thinks she may _still_ attempt a conversation about that cursed girl.

He’s relieved when her mouth slowly closes in dismay and at last, she turns back to where she came from.

  
  



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